


The Words

by Self_Indulgent_TMNT



Category: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-01
Updated: 2016-09-01
Packaged: 2018-08-12 10:54:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7931935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Self_Indulgent_TMNT/pseuds/Self_Indulgent_TMNT
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reader is a fraud/con artist who's down on their luck, they're also in love with Rodney Skinner, their childhood friend. When the invisible cockney thief shows up at their door with an offer to travel the world with him and the League, there are some words which need to be spoken. Only maybe they don't.</p>
<p>Reader's gender is never specified.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Words

**Author's Note:**

> So I love Skinner, I think he's great, and I've never found any Skinner/Reader fics and it's been bothering me (if you know of any, please tell me!) and so this evening I sat down with a desperate urge to write some. This is absolutely not my usual style and I've not spent much time on it but I wanted to write some Rodney and this is where it went. It's just a scene I've had in my head. I'm not really happy with it, I may come back and improve it one day.
> 
> I believe that Skinner wouldn't necessarily find it easy to be open about deep emotions and stuff, so this is my solution kinda thing.  
> I hope you like it.

You stared into the mirror, your eyes meeting those in your reflection, they looked lifeless even to you. The smell of your room caught in the back of your throat, an acidic mixture of mould, rotting wood and damp which would have made you gag if you weren’t used to it. Your clothes hung around you in tatters which you had desperately tried to save multiple times but were finally giving out.  
It hadn’t always been like this. You’d started somewhere similar to this, growing up in lodgings which were only one step up from living on the streets, but for a few glorious years you’d lived in luxury and riches, mingling with high society, wearing the best clothes and eating the best food. Lies, all of it.  
You, like so many before you, had dragged yourself from poverty through crime. While some chose robbery or gangs, you’d indulged your natural talent for falsehood and become fraud and a con. You’d lied your way to the top, convincing people to give you everything with a silver tongue and a twinkle in your eye. You’d gone by a different name then, given yourself a different background and history, even teaching yourself to speak with an upper class accent, training your tongue not to use your natural cockney but to sound more fitting for the scene you aspired to. And it had worked. You’d slipped among the upper classes as easily as you slip into clothes.  
I guess nothing can last forever. A slip up, a missed detail from your fake past that you’d forgotten to memorise and you had to run from that life, ending up in a hovel on the same streets of London that you’d grown up in. These streets held so many memories for you, good and bad: playing games in the filthy street with your friends because there was nowhere else to go; begging for money or work, honing your talent for fabrications so that deceit came more naturally than the truth; watching your mother nurse your dying step-father for so long that you started to hate him for being such a burden. You’d never wanted to end up here again, there were ghosts around every corner. But most of all there was him. Every familiar sight brought back memories of him, of growing up together, as close as family, as thick as thieves. Rodney Skinner.  
You’d lost everything in your life; family, friends, money, home, faith, hope, you’d even lost yourself, but you still had him. You hadn’t seen him in years, but he was always with you, always yours.  
You’d never wanted to fall in love with Skinner. It had happened suddenly, like being hit by a train, one moment he was your friend and then suddenly you looked at him and you were in love. Then he’d left. Rodney always did that. He just couldn’t sit still, and you desperately wanted to find somewhere to settle, so he’d left and you’d stayed and you hadn’t seen him since.  
And then there was a knock on the door.

No one visited you, no one was supposed to know you were here, but when you opened the door and there was no one to be seen your heart leapt.  
“Rodney?” you whispered. There was a draft beside you, as though someone had entered the room, and you closed the door silently.  
There was an agonising moment of silence as you stared at the spot where you knew the invisible man would be. It was after Skinner became invisible that you’d fallen in love with him, in fact that might have been part of what caused the unwanted love. You couldn’t see Skinner, no one could, but at the same time it was as though you could. You’d grown up with him, you knew how he thought and moved, and you could just tell where he’d be standing and what expression he was pulling. You’d long since given up on trying to picture what he looked like, considering he didn’t look like anything. It was when you let go of who he’d been that you’d finally mastered the art of seeing the invisible. You stopped looking for something you’d never see and instead you focused on the person, you focused on who he was. It was like you could feel him, like you could see this light emanating from his soul. You couldn’t really see anything, you just sort of knew.  
“Well this place is a dump” the achingly familiar voice sounded from the spot your eyes focused on.  
“That’s what you call a greeting? After years without seeing each other, I don’t even get a hello” you replied, now incredibly self-conscious of your painstakingly constructed accent compared to his natural one.  
“I thought we were passed ‘ello, luv”  
“Are you going to explain your presence here?” you asked stiffly.  
“I was in the area. I saw you an’ I wanted to see you, so I followed you ‘ere”  
You didn’t really want to respond, so you didn’t. It wasn’t really a surprise, since you’d both left home the only way you ever saw each other was showing up out of the blue. He sniffed and seemed to choke on the rancid air.  
“What ‘appened?” he asked quietly.  
“Slip up. I was compromised” was all you said.  
“You? Slip up? That don’t sound like you”  
“Yeah well it happened. Now I live here. It’s not so bad, it’s just like where we started”  
“Where we started wasn’t somewhere I’d wanna go back to”  
“I assume you’re doing better for yourself, then?” you asked, biting your lip to deal with the agony in your heart at being so close to him without being his.  
“I guess you could say that’. I’m part of a group o’ people like me, freaks. We ‘elp people, put our uniqueness to good use”  
You snorted in derision. “You? Help people? That hardly sounds like you, Rodney”  
“Tha’s unfair” he said coldly “I never wanted to be a criminal, you know that. We only ever did what we did ‘cause we ‘ad to. I don’ ‘ave to now”  
“Mysterious benefactor?” you mocked.  
“Mysterious captain actually, but only abou’ as mysterious as I am. Goes by the name of Nemo, he provides for us”  
“Are you just here to rub your success in my face?” you snapped.  
“No!” Skinner was quick to deny it “I told you, I’m ‘ere to see you. I ‘ad no idea…”  
“Yeah well now you do. Maybe you should just leave” you said, turning your back on him.  
There was silence for a very long moment before his voice, quiet and careful, slashed through it. “Come back with me”  
“What?”  
“Come back to the ship, ‘elp people with us, I’m sure we could find a use for your talents”  
“I can’t…” you stuttered, choking on your own breath.  
It wasn’t that you didn’t want to, it was that you were too scared of losing him to let yourself even have him in the first place. In your world, love was more than just a struggle, it was more than just a weakness. It was the ultimate weakness. Love makes you weak, it is the worst thing that can happen to you. It means you have something to lose. You can’t have something to lose.  
“Why not?” he asked.  
“Because…”  
Because you loved him. Was it really so hard to say it?  
It was easier to take when you didn’t have to see him, when there wasn’t the temptation there every day.  
“Because you love me”, Rodney said it for you.  
“W-what?”  
“Oh come on, darling, I’m not blind”  
You just stared, something between sadness and horror in your eyes. Eventually you forced out a reply.  
“Why didn’t you say before?”  
“Probably for the same reasons you never did. Love isn’t something we allow in our world, is it?”  
“Then why now?”  
“Cause I don’t ‘ave to live in that world anymore. I’m sick of lyin’ and hidin’ and pretendin’ it’s all fine. An’, I guess I love you too. I always ‘ave”  
That was a revelation so massive that it sent you physically reeling.  
“Why didn’t you tell me?”  
“Never needed to. I didn’t wanna complicate things an’ make it all about being in love. It’s always just been about lovin’ for me, the words and acknowledgement never mattered”  
“But I’ve been in agony!” you cried.  
“An’ did that ever stop you loving me? Did it ever stop you showing it?”  
“Well, no, I guess not”  
“Exactly”  
The room was still for a very long moment, neither of you sure what to do. Eventually you found some words, some words you’d been dying to say for too damn long.  
“I love you, Rodney Skinner” you whispered and you could almost see his smile.  
“You don’t need to say it”  
“But I want to”  
There was the noise of footsteps and then invisible arms around you. “This is better than a thousand ‘I-love-you’s” he said quietly. “We don’ need the words, we just need the feeling”  
You wrapped your arms around him and rested your head on his shoulder.  
“Come with me” he offered again.  
“Promise me we’ll always have the feeling, and we’ll always show it even if we’re too scared to say it” you said back.  
“I promise”  
“Then I’ll come with you, then I’ll always come with you. You’re my home, Rodney, you’re all I have and I don’t ever want to be without you”

Rodney was right. You never needed the words, sometimes you said them but you never needed them. You knew you were in love and that was all you ever needed.


End file.
